Defrag
by MarcianTobay
Summary: Gaige and Lilith found audio recordings Roland created. [Timeline: Post-Borderlands 2]


"Which badass babe just passed her Cipher check? This one!" Gaige leaned back and looked at the now open safe. She pursed her lips before leaning her head back and shouting at the ceiling.

"Hey guys? I just did something totally awesome and impressive and you're all AFK. Can you get in here, please?"

Her voice echoed to the other rooms of the Resistance base. Brick, Lilith, and Mordecai heard from the balcony and began to head in. Behind Gaige, Claptrap spoke.

"Hey! It was my wisdom that helped you open this, minion? Don't I count as having bared witness to our glorious victory of an inanimate object?"

"Shut up."

"Oh-kay!" he responded reflexively.

Lilith looked doubtfully towards Gaige. "Open what, exactly? What are you doing in here?"

"Psh!" Gaige started. "You give me nothing to do and leave me in a room with digital locks and no key in sight? What do you _think _is going to happen?"

Brick spoke bluntly. "What boxes?" Mordecai added, "Yeah, what are you on about, again?"

The young mechromancer grinned wide before picking up the small safe and holding it up. "I have no idea! I just found it in the bigger safe and it's unlabeled. Locked tightly. How cool is _that_?"

It was a small metal case, roughly the size of a backpack. It seemed fairly heavy, as Gaige had been letting most of it lean on her cyborg arm.

Lilith nodded, impressed. "That's… actually pretty cool, yeah. Let's see what's inside."

Without waiting, she reached in and pulled out a series of unmarked tapes.

"Huh."

"Oh, yeah!" Claptrap shouted. "There are spare tapes all over Sanctuary! People just leave them lying around. It's kind of bizarre, isn't it?"

Mordecai scratched his head. "Guess we forgot to clear out Roland's safe after it was all over."

The Siren was expressionless. "Yeah, guess we did…"

Claptrap spun around. "Well, that was exciting! Now I bet everyone wants to hang out with their best friend Claptrap and let him show them where all the other tapes are in Sanctuary, right? It'll be like our old games of Hide and Seek, only it'll actually be a game and not be screaming in terror!"

A load groan emitted from Lilith. "Can someone please get him out of here?"

"On it." Effortlessly, Brick strode forward, picked up Claptrap with one hand, and kept moving down the stairs.

There was a moment of hesitation in the air. A moment of realization that whatever was on the tapes couldn't be what they wanted. Each tried to temper their expectations in different ways. Perhaps there was nothing on the tapes. Perhaps there was some sort of everything.

To end the silence, Mordecai asked "So, you wanna hit play or-" "Yeah, yeah. Sorry, yeah." Lilith nodded vigorously and pressed play.

There was a moment of dead air. Faint scrapping noises. Then Roland's voice. His deep, resonating tone. His precise word choice. His definitive inflections.

"Thousand cuts is a winding trek that is constantly assailable at one hundred and eighty degrees. Areas of attack rotate as the trail winds up the mountain. As helpful as Brick's bandits are, they lack the coherence to coordinate this kind of attack. We can harness their chaotic nature best by putting them in buzzards and basically tell them to follow their base instincts. While this does put the Vault Hunter at risk, it is within an acceptable range."

"Hey!" Gaige shouted. Lilith shot her a look that silenced her immediately. The tape continued.

"While I have no idea why Angel wouldn't want Lilith to come, virtually all reconnaissance we've performed previously synchs with what Angel has provided. Despite the confusing nature of this mission, we have, at this time, no reason to doubt Angel's advice here."

Lilith rubbed her throat. Gaige shifted uncomfortably. Roland spoke a final sentence.

"End of Tape 13-B." As it was said, Lilith noticed a matching label written onto the tape itself.

"Thirteen tapes?" Mordecai asked.

"At least," Gaige said reflexively. "I mean, numbers as primary and then alphabet as a subcategory is, like, pretty much the default setting on sorting, but there are other ways. Maybe B is the category and this is the thirteenth tape on Thousand Cuts. Depends on where Roland learned to sort. What planet did you say he's from?"

The question was never answered. Instead, Lilith grabbed the tapes and turned them over in her hands. "And these are all the ones you found?"

"In this box, yeah. About six or seven. They're all labeled for different things. I have no idea how this guy sorted his inventory. Totally crazy. Look at this one." Gaige held up one of the tapes. "This one's not even marked. How does this even work?" Laughing, she pressed the button.

"If you're hearing this, I'm most likely dead."

The air was sucked out of the room. No one moved. No one spoke. The tape continued.

"In the last twenty-four hours, Angel has betrayed us and Sanctuary has come under attack. Causalities were minimal but noteworthy. We're gathering intel at this point, but the fact remains that the stalemate between The Resistance and Handsome Jack has been broken. The only imagery I can come up with is a train running towards missing tracks, unable to stop. I suspect Tina has played a role in this thought process." There was a sigh. "I have no idea how to do this, so I'll just begin."

For some reason, Lilith's pulse raced and she hoped that what she was about to hear was absolutely anything besides what it obviously was. But the train continued.

"Patricia. I'll keep this brief. You are an amazing scientist and absolutely brilliant. You have my permission to extract the last three sentences from this tape and put them on another. That's my gift to you; a voice affirming your genius that also is physically incapable of having expectations of you. You've earned that much.

"Tina. You've saved my life more times than I can count. I was honored the day you accidentally called me dad. I have always considered you my daughter in several ways. I hope you grow up to be a wonderful person. You'll make some young man very happy. Or young woman very happy. Or several bandits unhappy. Whichever you prefer.

"This is why I don't like this kind of thing. I'm terrible at this. Hold on."

Mordecai spoke to Lilith softly. "Should… should we get the others?" Lilith moved her head towards his but kept her eyes locked firmly on the tape. "Yeah, go do that." He nodded and walked out of the room while Roland's recording finished composed itself.

Gaige and Lilith listened silently. His support of Moxxi. His gratitude for Marcus. So on and forth. Until the moment that Lilith dreadfully craved.

"Lilith. I don't… I have no idea how to say this. You and I have been through so much together. You understand me better than anyone. More than anything, I regret that we both let our relationship starve. It's a regret I've had for a long time. A mistake I plan to right once this is all over. But… there might not be an "all over" for me. For you. For us. So."

He took a deep breath.

"Lil, I just want you to know thaDrop the beat Drop the bass let me hear you get crazy with the wub!"

Brick continued to carry Claptrap by his head as the small robot protested.

"All I'm saying is that these tapes are a lot of fun! You can use them to record song lyrics or write your autobiography or even pretend to have friends! Come on, buddy. Let's go dig up some of the others I've been using. It'll be like old times!"

The Slab King set him down and spoke exhaustedly. "We never _had _old- Oh, forget it." And walked off.

Claptrap looked around at no one in particular, his optic lens moving in and out.

"Wub wub wub. Wub wub. Wub wub wub. Wub wubwub wub!"

Lilith, now alone, crouched over the tapes spread out over the floor. Her eyes were red. Her mouth hung open. She exhaled rapidly, quietly, and repeatedly. The gasping began to build. Faster and faster. Until finally she fell from her crouching to on her knees, a short distance that fell with infinite weight. She gulped and a single tear ran down her face. Her breathing wasn't slowing. She clenched her teeth and a high, pained sound echoed out of her mouth, which she immediately covered. The tears began to flow rapidly. She stopped covering her mouth and began to sob. Then her fists fell to the floor. She closed her eyes and screamed, high, loud, and with abandon. She released the anger, the pain, and the heart she had been denying since landing on Pandora. She screamed at the tape and at her younger self that wasn't open with Roland. She screamed at the Roland that felt safer talking to tapes than to her. She screamed at Handsome Jack and the vaults and the Warrior.

Outside the building, Maya, Axton, Salvador, and even Krieg charged for the building. Krieg spun his axe, Salvador loaded his guns, and Maya's tattoos glowed. As they reached the entrance, Gaige stepped out and held up a hand to stop them.

Her voice carried over the balcony and into the room where Lilith held the tape in one hand.

"Guys, chill. It's okay. We just doing some defragging, is all."

Axton spoke. "You sure about that, ma'am?"

"Yeah. Everything's going to be fine. All we need is a minute."


End file.
